Revitalised, we were back on the road to Monterey. Once again, we stupidly chose to travel during rush hour and encountered quite some traffic. It was not too bad, and we got to Monterey in good time.

We found our campground without too much of a hassle and were pleased to find that there were plenty of spaces available. It is quite a strange campground, as it is just part of a normal park, and suddenly there are these 40 campsites. It is not very busy here at the moment, I'd say there are about 10 occupied sites. It’s great because there are less people to share the facilities (which are very clean and very good, I must say). I’d say there is a perfect number of campers here right now. I wouldn’t like it too empty coz then it would be quite creepy as it is totally pitch black here, save for the moon... which is shining with all its might today.

Getting back into primitive camping, we needed to stock up on our supplies such as water, ice and wine

. We went to the local Safeways to do some shopping. Due to the wine, we were asked for ID, which is not a problem as they always ask. Azrael presented his Swiss ID and the old fart behind the counter actually turned around and told us that only US ID is accepted! WHAT?!?!?!? So foreigners can never prove their age and can never buy alcohol??? Obviously he gave us the "I’m just doing my job" line, but I’m sorry.... we have now been here for 3.5 weeks, using our Swiss ID and Swiss driving licence as prove of age everyday! We could not believe the ridiculous-ness of it all and actually just left the store without buying any of the other items!!!

OK... in hindsight, it was really childish because we got ourselves into a lose-lose situation. We didn’t get any of the stuff we wanted, and we didn’t actually manage to prove anything, because the old fart will continue with his stupid ridiculous policy, and he doesn’t really give a crap whether or not we shop there because it’s not as if our one purchase will affect the profitability of the store!

Anyway, we decided that it was time for dinner! We soon discovered that we were actually in the next town called Pacific Grove. I checked out the Lonely Planet and a restaurant called Passionfish sounded really good, so we drove there and hoped to get a table

Eeeeepss.... it’s a really nice, pretty fancy restaurant and we were so under-dressed. Nevermind... this is after all a beach town. They didn’t complain, so we just went ahead and got seated. We saw the table next to us being served their main courses and we got really excited! The food was so so so so good!!! For starters, I had the Monterey squid with asian mango vinegerette and Azrael had the Dungeness crab cake with spicy tomato relish. My squid was pretty good, cooked quite well. But I especially loved the vinegarette. It was almost like the sauce in a Som Tam (Thai papaya salad).

For mains, Azrael had the Black Angus steak with garlic potato cake and arugula (rocket/rucola) onion salad and I had the sturgeon with lemongrass rice and spicy lemongrass sauce. This was the first time I’d ever had sturgeon and meat was firm, juicy and succulent. The texture is kind of like a sword fish, but not nearly as dry. My sauce was incredible! It was quite spicy and the flavour very complex. Azrael’s steak was really good too! The meat was done to perfection, and the sauce was also very flavourful and complex. The salad was very well combined, but the garlic potato cake was slightly disappointing.

You will notice that we hardly ever have dessert.... and this time was no exception. The desserts weren’t screaming our names, and we were pretty stuffed. All in all, another fantastic meal.....